Loyal | Tom Riddle

11: The Plan

Arabella's wrath had fixated on John, and she was intent on tormenting him endlessly, much to their classmates' humour.

Whenever they were in a lesson, he could feel her burning gaze on the back of his head, searing through his scalp and injecting his thoughts with self-doubt, worry, and anxiety. She could make his skin crawl with a single glare, make his face redden with only a blank stare. It was like their first year all over again, when John had mistakenly called her a bigoted troll with brains the size of a shrivelled kidney bean (he had meant to insult Nikolai but had somehow confused their names).

Yet, curiously enough, she was perfectly amicable, although a bit reserved, with both Will and Halia -- especially directly in front of John. It was as if she enjoyed torturing him slowly, driving him mad day by day.

Her warm smiles had been replaced by a mask of seething rage, with an ocean of fire reflected in her usually serene blue eyes. Her calm demeanour was gone, transformed into a paranoid, jittery behaviour not unlike that of a wild man who believed that even his own shadow was out to get him. Something was eating her alive, consuming her very soul, but John just couldn't put his finger on what it was. It had to do with Tom Riddle and her brother, but just what exactly it was, he hadn't even the faintest inkling.

He was startled out of his ever spiralling thoughts by his book falling to the floor of Gryffindor's common room. Glancing up, he caught sight of a shadow swiftly disappearing towards the Fat Lady.

Gritting his teeth, John stood abruptly, abandoning his half-finished Charms essay on the various uses of Aguamenti as he followed the direction of his mercurial heart.

✧ ✧ ✧

Nikolai and the others were lounging about in an unused classroom, having converted it into a sort of headquarters for their daily meetings. Tom had cast multiple protection spells that hid it from wandering eyes, making the door appear as if it led to a dusty broom closet.

Turning his attention from one of Malfoy's typical Mudblood tirades, Nikolai interested himself with gazing out the window towards the Black Lake. It glinted in the sunlight that was becoming rarer by the day, tempting him to revisit its pebble-strewn shores once more.

"--and then I told her that she's nothing but a pathetic little half-blood," Edmund Mulciber boasted, to laughter from every other boy sitting on top of the desks.

Noticing Nikolai, Yaxley called out to him, "What would've you done, Travers?"

"Hexed her, obviously," came Malfoy's reply for Nikolai. "No filthy half-breed would ever dare talk to me like that."

"I believe he asked Travers, Abraxas," Tom's cold voice said in a clipped tone.

Malfoy muttered something under his breath but said nothing as the whole room fell silent, all eyes trained on Nikolai.

"I... I would've done the same, my Lord," he stammered.

Riddle's face morphed into a sneer. "What would you have done?"

"H-hex the girl," Nikolai clarified, hastily adding, "my Lord."

Tom relaxed into his leather arm chair, which only he could sit in. The air hung heavily in the room, pregnant with the dread of eleven faces.

"I do believe, Nikolai," he said slowly, "that you ought to pay more attention when you're with us. You wouldn't want to convey the idea that you think half-bloods are equal to us, do you?"